


a westerly view

by pinebluffvariant



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinebluffvariant/pseuds/pinebluffvariant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only later did Scully realize she'd bought a car he'd have trouble fitting into comfortably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a westerly view

Scully is driving. It’s April, finally April, the sun brighter and warmer than it was just a few weeks ago. Spring in the DC area comes as a blessing from the heavens, warming her inside and out. She doesn’t remember last April very well. Last April she had been busy getting to know colleagues, patients, herself. But those introductions… she can’t remember them well. Dr., not Mrs. Thank you. Yes, just up from Goochland County, although I did live in Georgetown for years. Laughter. Go, Terps! It has to have gone something like that. All she remembers is the cold, and eyes gritty from staring at the ceiling.

She squints and adjusts the sun visor of her Prius. It’s one of the new, little ones. A parting gift or a homecoming one, she doesn’t know. Both, neither… After she’d left - not left, moved - she’d bought it because she was craving something compact, something new, something hers, something she could parallel park in her new neighborhood and feel, for the first time in decades, unattached, untethered. Only later did she realize she’d bought a car that he’d have trouble fitting into comfortably.

Friday night traffic on 95 South. That particularly torturous stretch near Quantico lies behind her now. She held her breath and sped up around the familiar exit. Not your problem, anymore, not your business, not your home. That was two and a half hours ago. From 95, crawl up the exit to 64 West and into the mountains…

She slipped the new Jimmy Choos off her feet several traffic reports ago, and now they’re lolling in the passenger seat. Well, in the lap of the passenger, cradled in the comfy bucket seat that his hunched, lanky form makes in the small space.

“We could have taken my car,” Mulder says, stretching, looking at her. She squints in his direction briefly. His face is obscured by a corona of light from the setting sun. She can’t quite see him. She wants to see him better, and be seen. “I like yours, though. It’s you. Snug and safe.” Snug and safe.

She called at lunchtime, saying “come up.” She meant tomorrow. But there he’d stood at 4pm at her door, wearing a puzzled smile and her favorite cornbread from down south. He’d driven his beater without stopping. Driving it again that day would have been stupid.

“It’s not much further,” Scully sighs, squinting at the GPS resting between her legs in the seat, “hang in there.” Hang in there, hang in there, Dana. She pats his knee.

Forty-five minutes later, she brakes in a cloud of dust. Mulder groans as he unfolds himself from the seat, tumbling out and breathing in the chill. He leaves the Choos behind. He steps around the back of the car, takes a pair of sneakers from the trunk, opens her door, and leans down to help her put them on. “All that driving… a lady needs some pampering,” he mutters under his breath, but Scully can hear a question in his voice.

Where are we?

A gravel parking lot, handmade signs with many, many exclamation marks, pointing up onto a slight hill. Birches are budding all around them, and she shifts on her feet, grabs her pack and gloves from the backseat. She holds out her hand to him, and together they begin the gentle climb up the gravel path. Fifty-three year old knees and fifty-year year old feet scramble together.

At the top is a clearing. “Oh my god, no…” he breathes. “Wow.” She smiles and swallows the lump in her throat.

It’s tattered and worn, but Foamhenge - America’s only full-size replica of Stonehenge constructed entirely out of styrofoam! - still stands. It sits awkwardly on the stout hill, too symmetrical, its paint flaking, holes in its stones from years of fingers plucking at the styrofoam. Initials drawn in the foam, filling slowly in with moss. How does moss grow there?

Mulder stares at the structure, draws his coat closer around him, peers at her, and throws her that incredulous grin. The question from earlier lingers. “What’s going on, Scully?”

She holds his gaze. “I didn’t come with you. To England, that time.” The wind picks up, whistling at her - at her cowardice, at her courage. “I didn’t want to. My mind didn’t want to then and everything that came after that… I didn’t stop to reconsider. It all ate me up, Mulder. It ate me alive. I don’t want that.“ He nods.

“I think I know what you wanted, though.”

“Some… beginning.” He shifts his gaze to the sky. His Adam’s apple bobs precariously.

“I know, I…” She closes her eyes and grabs onto it - the twenty three years on her body. Her stomach muscles cramping from laughter. His fingers in her sneakers, caressing her bare ankle in the April mountain air. His breath in her hair, her terror in his bones, his taste on her tongue, his skin in her teeth. “I want to begin again. If you do. Start here in this place.”

His eyes are hidden by the glare from the sun. He’s walking backwards, into the center of the circle - but not away from her, she realizes. She knows those pursed lips and cocked head. Come here.

She walks into the circle until she can see him again. They’re drawn together in an embrace she can’t remember, it’s been so long. He paws at her backpack, drops it to the ground, sniffles a little. She kisses him.

The Virginia mountains are blue against the setting sun, and budding green. They’re standing at a simulacrum of a landmark they’ve never seen together. They look out over these mountains their younger selves didn’t ever notice, out of tiredness, out of anger, out of the claustrophobia of their life in the car.

Years and years of history are fluttering in the wind in this odd place, and there they are, breathing the same air again.


End file.
